How Jeeves Helps You Control Recurring Subscriptions and Optimise Online Ad Spend

If you’re using a combination of bank transfers, checks and credit, debit or prepaid cards to pay for digital expenses, you’re probably struggling with:

  • Keeping track of subscription service spending and usage
  • Card payment declines on frequent, high-value transactions
  • Staff using unauthorised suppliers
  • Overall expenditure that’s tough to track
  • Having to wait for income to come in before paying expenses
  • A lack of detailed financial reporting to create realistic budgets, avoid overspending and plan growth and investment

We’ve designed our Jeeves virtual cards to help solve these exact problems.

In this article, we’ll cover:

Note: Struggling with controlling your expenditures on subscription, advertising, and more? Switch to the ease of virtual credit cards when you try Jeeves.

Why use Jeeves virtual cards and how they work

Created by founders for founders, Jeeves provides access to an agreed credit limit, free virtual and physical corporate payment cards and online spend management software to help companies manage their growth effectively.

When it comes to managing online spend, virtual cards give you more flexibility, security and control than physical cards. With Jeeves, you’ll get both types of credit cards to manage your spend.

When you join Jeeves, you can issue an unlimited number of free virtual credit cards through the platform with a click and give each card its own credit limit. Each Jeeves virtual card has its own unique card number, expiration date and CVC code.

Jeeves virtual credit cards
Create and edit Jeeves virtual credit cards to control recurring spend

Jeeves’ virtual cards:

  • Enable greater control over your company’s overall spending.
  • Ensure greater security against fraud or expense abuse.
  • Are easier to use and control because you have instant access to and overview of purchasing in real-time.

You’ll also have the flexibility to better monitor and manage your business spending because you can use your Jeeves virtual cards in a variety of ways.

For example, you can:

  • Give employees and departments their own virtual cards to make tracking employee spending and expenditures across your company easier.
  • Run off cards for temporary project teams to ensure they stay within allotted project budgets.
  • Create a virtual card to make a one-off purchase and then cancel it straight after to prevent additional payments.
  • Discontinue a card at a moment’s notice. Ideal for suspected fraud or to block expense abuse.
  • Track the spending on each card in real-time on your dashboard to more easily detect fraud and unauthorised spending.
  • Filter for virtual card transactions so you can have a complete overview of all your virtual spending at a glance.
  • Use the credit to pay for any expenses as you wait on income (i.e. manage your cashflow more easily)
Jeeves dashboard and filters

So, what are the benefits of using Jeeves corporate expense card to manage your SaaS subscriptions and other digital expenses?

Have greater control over your recurring subscriptions

Jeeves physical business credit card

When you pay for all your subscriptions with one card, you have to go line by line through a statement to match purchases with transactions. 

With virtual cards, you can go a step further and allocate one virtual card per SaaS account, making your subscription spending much easier to track.

Here’s how you can use Jeeves to get your SaaS expenses under control:

  • Avoid unnecessary spending through easy tracking. Expense tracking is much easier when you can roll off a card for each individual subscription since you’ll be able to see at a glance how much you spent on a specific software over time (without matching transactions). You’ll also be able to see immediately if you’re paying subscriptions to similar services from competing vendors, and avoid creating multiple accounts with the same provider. Using virtual cards use will help reduce costs, optimise your spending, and save time because you’ll have fewer subscription-related transactions to track. 
Track employee spending with Jeeves
  • Better cost control over every subscription. When you create unique virtual cards for each subscription, you can also set a maximum credit limit on each service per month or year. You can change limits at any time with a click when needed, transfer funds between cards, or eliminate a card when you’ve stopped the service. 
  • Protect your business-critical operations. As each service is now paid by its own virtual card, you can increase credit limits with a click or issue a new card to pay a supplier in case one of your cards is blocked. Department heads, staff and external collaborators can add virtual cards to Google or Apple Pay to make sure everyone can easily renew subscriptions with a click, even when traveling.  
  • Stop unwanted charges. If a colleague forgets to cancel a subscription after a free trial, it’ll be a lot easier to spot this on the dashboard. Just contact the vendor to cancel and then withdraw your card to prevent accidental charges. 

Track and secure your online advertising spend

Managing online ad spending on one payment card is complicated and costly. Here’s why:

  • It’s difficult to track expenses across multiple campaigns.
  • Ad platforms and card providers are more likely to block your card if you make multiple high-value transactions.
  • For debit and pre-paid cards, you’ll need to have the money up front to pay for advertising campaigns.
  • It’s more expensive to use multiple cards on paid search ads and campaigns in several countries because of variable charges and individual currency FX fees.

You can create campaign-specific, fee-free virtual credit cards with Jeeves to track payments in real-time, avoid disruptions and have the control you need to stop overspending on ad campaigns.

Set spending limits on Jeeves credit cards

Here’s how you can use Jeeves virtual cards to purchase online advertising:

  • Better track your advertising spend. Spin off virtual cards for advertising by account, department, platform, network, campaign and so on. This makes it much easier for accounts and advertising teams to drill down into individual and grouped campaigns to measure ROI.
  • Have fewer card-related disruptions to campaigns. If you’re using the same business credit card to pay for all your ad expenses, you risk interrupting ad campaigns crucial for your business and clients. Issuing virtual cards for each advertising campaign removes this problem. And you can set and change the credit limit on each Jeeves card through the dashboard. 
  • Manage and overcome card suspensions on accounts with a click. If one card is blocked, your other campaigns stay active because you’re using unique virtual cards for each. Instead of trying to unblock the card, you can restore your campaign easily by rolling off a new virtual credit card where you’ll add the needed funds with a click.
  • Save with cashback. Jeeves is one of the best cashback business credit cards because of our generous cashback program. You can get up to 1% cashback on all card spend.

How media clients benefit from Jeeves

Media agencies use Jeeves to roll off separate virtual cards to pay for individual campaigns, which lessen the risk of disruption by providers on repeated high-value spending. If a platform blocks one of these virtual cards, all your other campaigns are still live. With Jeeves, you can quickly issue a new card and transfer the funds with a click to restart your blocked campaign.

One Jeeves media customer also finds virtual cards make it easier to bill customers. That’s because it’s a lot easier to see how much was spent on each customer’s campaign for the month, and no time is wasted searching for the amount per campaign or trying to remember which card was used. 

Because Jeeves virtual cards are credit cards, media agencies gain an advantage over competitors by billing for ad costs at the end of the month (most agencies bill in advance). This means easier accounting for you and improved cash flow for both you and your clients.

And with Jeeves cashback on all your spending, our media clients see their gross profit margins increase when purchasing on their Jeeves cards.

Jeeves cashback on all spending

Save money and increase your margins 

When you switch to using Jeeves' credit cards and spend management software, you can also:

  • Find and use the best value suppliers. With QuickBooks and Xero integration, you can separate your virtual card payments into cost centres. Identify your most expensive suppliers and approach them with a discounted purchase agreement.
  • Accurately measure return on investment (ROI). Group virtual cards according to specific departments and projects to quickly see if you’re sticking to the budget. For extra security, assign a limit across all relevant cards to match a department’s overall budget. Transparency over budgets also enables you to measure current ROI on people, departments, and teams.
  • Improve important supplier relationships. Many suppliers offer discounts for prompt payment. You can avoid having discounts removed or reduced because of late payments when you set up a virtual card for each supplier. This way, you stay on their good side and can monitor exactly how much you’re spending through the dashboard.
  • Increase margins by receiving cashback on all your spend. One of the benefits of using a credit card is you get additional benefits such as cashback and airport lounge access. With Jeeves, you’ll get up to 1% cashback on all card spend.

Discover how Jeeves is an alternative to American express because there's no annual fee.

Monitor and oversee travel-related costs

Many Jeeves’ clients send their employees around the country and world. They meet suppliers, attend trade shows, open local offices and more. Managing and booking flights and hotels can get really complicated when you have only one physical company card and no one else has access to it.

With virtual credit cards, you can give virtual business credit cards to employees to book hotels, flights, car rentals and more prior to taking business trips. It makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on travel-related costs and oversee employee spending through the Jeeves dashboard and spend management tool. 

Our clients also glean opportunities to approach suppliers like hotel chains, airlines, and car hire firms to get the best deals, as well as save all the time spent managing travel expense reimbursements. 

Start using Jeeves cards for all your spending

With Jeeves, you’ll be able to create business credit cards that help you stay on top of recurring subscriptions by easily tracking them with virtual cards. You’ll be able to optimise your online ad spend with our cashback, as well as track spending across various campaigns and avoid any cards being blocked. 

Finally, the Jeeves card will help you improve your profit margins with more accurate tracking, as well as make managing travel expenses less of a headache by allocating virtual cards to each employee. 

If you’re already a Jeeves customer, you can start creating virtual cards now. Contact your account manager to find out more. 

Note: Not a client yet? To streamline company purchasing and take control over your expenditure, try Jeeves.